


You Said You're Fine

by jeta



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Dark, Friendship, Gen, Loki Whump, Mind Games, Not Thor2 compliant, Post-Avengers Asgard, Torture, just an excuse for character abuse, not sure where this came from at all, random backstory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-18
Updated: 2014-12-18
Packaged: 2018-01-25 12:59:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1649480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeta/pseuds/jeta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was supposed to be a normal rescue mission: simple, clean, and to the point. No one had known about all of the secrets buried deep in the stone...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Fandral tapped his frozen toes against the marble floor, praying it would stop snowing. His metal-lined boots rang against the stone, sending echoes up and down the empty, ruinous chamber.

He hated this place. No, he loathed it. Too many memories. But Thor had instructed him to come, and so he had come. When the Crown Prince of Asgard tells you to shut down a blackmarket slave ring, you do as you’re told and don’t argue.

Still, it was bleak. The old structure had once been some sort of glamourous palace, Fandral had been told, but had been eaten alive by time until even the very stone felt weak and feeble. At the height of its glory it must have been a wonder to behold – golden and jeweled and filled with illustrious, wealthy aristocrats – but now it had sunk into decay. The dome in the ceiling was crumbling in places. Snow swept into every corner, along with mold and grime. A fitting location for a despicable trade.

A low snorting sound reached his ears from across the room, and Fandral straightened automatically, almost rigidly. That sound brought back unwelcome memories, too. To avoid thinking about it, he cast his mind about for distraction, feeling his chest tighten. He resisted the urge to look behind his back toward the exits. Wasn’t it Odin All-Father who had told him about the Svartalheim aristocrats? No – it must have Loki, gleaning it from his reading or something. It was ages ago, when Fandral had been only newly rescued from the slavers’ holds. They had been on horseback, all five of them. He remembered the way Loki’s eyes lit up when he found out he knew something the others didn’t know, and how he had recounted dozens of newly learned historical facts over and over again until Thor finally lost his temper and sent Loki flying from his horse.

They had just been boys, then.

Fandral shook his head, shaking snow from his hair. He hadn’t thought of Loki in a long time. It had been almost twenty - no, closer to thirty years since Loki had slipped away from his glass prison cell in the depths of Asgard, and longer than that since Fandral had actually spoken to the man he had once counted a childhood friend. When they were all young together, Loki had been a pain in the nether regions, of course, but so had they all, really. And when Fandral had been brought back from…this place, Loki and Thor and the others had kept him busy and active so that he hadn’t been able to dwell on… _all of this_ , he thought, casting his eyes around the room.

For a fleeting moment, he forgot the mess with the Tesseract entirely and wished fervently that both of them were here with him, now, to distract him from his boyish fears again. The snorting sounds had grown louder in the last few minutes, and more frequent. The sounds didn’t alarm him, exactly. But that was because Fandral knew his own abilities, now, and trusted them to keep him safe.

And besides, he reminded himself, he had more than a few tricks up his sleeve still, in case things went sour.

He tapped his foot again, and this time, the sound overpowered the low snorting. The room went quiet, and then a large shape separated itself from the grime on the walls, almost seeming to peel itself from the graying stone. Fandral was used to this as well: panelling was the preferred method of travel for the Svartal traders. It was natural to their kind, and extremely, excruciatingly uncomfortable for anyone not of their kind. Fandral’s arms tingled with the remembrance of being trapped inside walls for days and days, waiting for the awful news that he had been sold to some new bidder, struggling to move at all, unable to breathe evenly –

He drew in his breath. He wasn’t prepared for this, not like he thought – but no, he couldn’t allow himself to panic. He forced a bland, humorless smile onto his features, knowing it would calm his nerves just to know he wasn’t showing his anxiety. He mustn't show the least hesitation.

If the trader noticed his sudden fear, though, it made no sign. It never would. These Svartal traders were shadow-people, distant cousins to the Elves, gray-skinned and without eyes or mouths or any other facial features. Blank panels. Just like the walls within which they stored their chattel.

“Good evening,” Fandral said lightly, but through gritted teeth. His polite smile was still pasted into place.

The trader stopped snorting and made a short but distinctive bow.

“I am making a large purchase. It’s rather urgent, you see,” Fandral said, trying to sound nonchalant. He had to coax them all out. “In fact, I believe I’ll need to see your entire stock.” He pulled a heavy leather wallet from his coat and hit it against his thigh, sending the sound of clinking coins through the almost-empty chamber. “Immediately.”

The trader stood motionless for a full minute. Fandral stood his ground too, though he felt sweat beading on the back of his neck, and then sliding down his spine. The light snowstorm overhead was not nearly cold enough for his taste. But finally the trader made another bow, and pressed himself back against the wall.

Immediately panels began sliding forward, and as the snuffling sounds recommenced, humanoid shapes began to emerge from the stone. Fandral looked on with awe, almost wonder; this must have been what it looked like when Odin had come to rescue him from the stone traders all those many years ago. One by one, each block became a person, and each person stumbled heavily forward until they were kneeling on the ground before Fandral and the trader. None of them so much as glanced up. Fandral guessed there were fifteen or twenty in all.

“You are sure this is everyone?” Fandral asked, then bit his tongue. “All of your _stock_ , that is?”

The correction came too late. The trader froze, then shifted to face him. Fandral felt his muscles clench – and then spring into action, before he had even consciously decided to move. The game was up. The trader sent a block of solid rock sliding right into Fandral’s shoulder; he barely had time to duck and roll before the trader had shifted into the wall again, disappearing into flatness. But Fandral wasn’t giving up that easily. Without bothering to pull his sword from his scabbard, he sent a booted foot into the place where the trader’s face had been most recently, and felt a gratifying thump in return as the trader folded back into the air, lurching in pain.

But Fandral’s victory was short-lived: no sooner had he grabbed the trader by the neck and pulled him forward out of the rock than the trader hurled another thick piece of rubble directly at Fandral’s face.

His skull would have been broken in an instant if not for the crash of a battle axe colliding with the stone, sending debris flying everywhere. Behind him, Sif grabbed hold of the trader as well, and to his side, Volstagg sent another battle axe into the wall where the trader’s companions must be hiding. Another trader collapsed out of the wall with a thud, but the third (there were always three, he remembered) shot off into the thickest part of the building. They could see his dark form rippling through the stone – and Fandral realized as a shot of horror coursed through him that the captives were being pulled back into the building.

He lunged for one, catching a small girl in his arms before the wall could pull her in. With a cry, Sif grabbed an old man at his left side. But the prisoner on Fandral’s right, the last in line, was being sucked right back in, and so was Fandral. He shoved the girl into Sif’s arms, struggling to release himself from the trader’s hold, not even caring at that moment about any of the other prisoners, his body shot through with terror at the prospect of having to return to live inside the walls –

“Not so fast!” Volstagg roared. A third battle axe collided with the third trader’s shadow, and finally the snuffling stopped completely.

Fandral released a huge, involuntary sigh of relief – his left ankle had been absorbed in the wall, but that would be relatively easy to dig out. Across the room, nearbyVolstagg let out a loud HA of victory laughter, and Sif panted heavily.

“I thought you were going to, and I quote, ‘win them over with your roguishly charming ways’ before we commenced with violence?” Sif accused, helping the little girl and the old man steady themselves.

Fandral winced as he noted that not one of the prisoners had moved from their kneeling positions. He yanked at his foot and began to chip at the rock encasing it while avoiding Sif’s eyes. “I did. I was the picture of charm. I was entirely – and totally – cool, as Thor would say that Lady Jane would say that Lady Darcy would say,” he replied, hacking at the rock with his sword to emphasize each phrase.

“Ha!” Volstagg roared again, collecting his axes and tossing one to Sif. “Very cool indeed, having one’s foot buried in solid rock! The very picture of cool.”

Fandral shot a glare over his shoulder at the big man. But as he did, he noticed the prisoner who had been half-reincased in the rock wall and felt a surge of guilt. “Come on, then. Let’s get these people to the ship before anyone notices they’re missing. Volstagg, kind friend, will you –”

Fandral swallowed the rest of his sentence in a gasp as he finally freed his leg, tripping away from the wall with relief. He brushed himself off, trying to look vain while he pulled himself together internally. Sif steadied him with a small, superior smile before returning her attention to the captives, rubbing their limbs and encouraging them to stand. Volstagg was already pulling at the last captive’s limbs, cheerfully whistling as he began to chop at the rock around them.

“Never fear, laddie, I know it’s been a rough little time you’ve had with these nasty bits of stone excrement, but we’ll have you out of here and back to health in no ti– ”

Then Volstagg stopped. His axe clattered to the ground.

Fandral spun around, certain they had forgotten a trader somehow (but no, there were always only three –)

But it wasn’t another trader. Volstagg was staring at the prisoner, his face painted with shock.The big man looked almost sick.

Fandral leapt over rubble to reach his friend’s side, his eyes going to the prisoner’s slack face. The prisoner, a man, was strange to him. He was still kneeling in the snow and stone, his heels and his back and his right arm encased in the wall, and his knees and left arm hanging just free. Volstagg had killed the third trader just in time; another second and the prisoner would likely have been enveloped in stone forever. But a narrow escape wouldn’t be what was making Volstagg gasp and stagger back as though afraid to touch a diseased thing…

“What is it?” Sif asked.

Volstagg merely shook his head.

Fandral exchanged a quick, confused glance with Sif, then stepped closer to the prisoner.It was very rare for Volstagg to be lost for words.

Letting his sore foot take most of his weight, Fandral bent down until he was at eye level with the prisoner. His heart began to beat very fast, faster even than it had when the trader had first appeared.

The prisoner was not unrecognizeable after all. The man’s face was sunken in, and half-hidden behind a curtain of tangled black hair. Stone and snow coated his thin skin like a collapsing mask, not entirely hiding a crisscross pattern of white scars spreading across his forehead and cheek. His green eyes were dull and unfocused, and his mouth hung open a little as he struggled to inhale.

“Who is it?” Sif repeated, and to Fandral, her voice sounded very far away. He lifted his fingers, but they froze in place as he tried to reach them out towards the prisoner. He wanted to refuse to believe he knew this man, this ghost, this remnant of a person.

“Loki…” he breathed.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Meanwhile, back in Asgard...

Thor absently traced the thin white scar on the back of his hand and tried to ease himself back into the couch in his parents’ sitting room. The couch was comfortable enough: cushy and red and gold and just barely big enough for two people. It had always been one of Thor’s favorites, in fact. But it was hard to be called in here like a child, waiting to be reprimanded for something that wasn’t really his fault in the first place.

  
That wasn’t all that was bothering him, though.

He traced the scar again, trying to isolate the cause of his anxiety...or was it fear… or was it just normal anger he was feeling?

No; he had to stop that. Not every unpleasant emotion could or should be translated into anger. Jane had taught him that much before she had 'flickered out,' as his parents had called it. He had raged against them for being callous, but it wasn’t their fault she was mortal. He knew that. He'd known that all along.

He also knew that it wasn’t their fault that Fandral, Sif, and Volstagg had disappeared without a trace. They’d been missing for over a month, not a single word about about how their raid on the slavers had gone having reached Asgard. But Thor wasn’t too worried about them yet. His friends didn’t often disappear without warning, but when they did, it was always for a good reason.

Still, Frigga would be displeased with him; she would say that he had risked—and possibly lost—his best friends’ lives on a fool’s errand, that slavers were parasites on the natural order, execrable but ineradicable. Her view of the requirements of justice had always been….conservative. But that wasn’t what was making him anxious. It also wasn’t the knowledge that Odin would hate having Thor give orders behind his back. Gods knew Thor was already very used to disappointing his father, after all.

No, it wasn’t those things…He settled into the couch cushions, feeling rather too small for it, oddly. There should be someone else here, it seemed to say. So maybe that was it: It was being called in here alone that was bothering him.

Thor had always hated being in trouble alone.

He traced the scar again. The healers could have removed it, of course. His mother had offered to do so personally. But removing the scar would be one step further from the memory of obtaining it, and that memory was precious to him… he had so little left from back then…  
For one moment he allowed the memory to wash over him, tinted gold by his nostalgia, though he knew very well that at the time it had all felt brutally black and white, life and death flashing past in a whirlwind for both of them—he, Thor, shouting with some sort of combination of amusement and dire fear—and his brother, little Loki, laughing at his side, having the time of his life, mere inches away from being slashed through with the enemies’ blades…Loki conjuring a knife out of the air, accidentally scraping it into Thor’s hand as he brought it up to guard against a Frostgiant’s pike that nearly connected with Thor’s forehead…Both of them laughing hysterically at the stupidity of Loki’s error, and of their own in coming to Jotenheim alone, of ever entering the stupid, stupid contest in the first place… Both of them certain that at any moment they would die out here, cold and broken-boned, but at least they’d die together…

“Thor,” his father’s voice called loudly from the other room, interrupting the course of the memory.

Thor looked up sharply. There was an edge, a strange, anxious edge in his father’s voice, and in his mother’s eyes as she came to the door. Thor felt a unexpected surge of fear as his father came to stand over them both, his face grave and his voice tight.

“What is it?” Thor asked quickly, half-rising from the couch.

His mother answered, and for the first time he noticed there were tears streaming down her cheeks. “There’s been some news…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks all for reading and commenting! I super appreciate your encouragement! It's been ages since I thought up this story. I had planned to fold it into a much bigger narrative I was making up, but I think I lost my notes on where it was going to go, so I'm writing from memory now, without planning much ahead. Anyway, very sorry if it's jumpy or doesn't make sense in some places! Let me know what to fix.
> 
> Also, sorry this is more of a snippet than a chapter. There is going to be some cutting back and forth in chronology and geography. Finally, fic is obviously not Thor 2 compliant, as there's parents.

**Author's Note:**

> This popped into my head for no real reason, but I have an idea where I think it's going, and let me warn you, it is not to the land of rainbows and unicorns. Jeez, I just shot Loki in the chest in my other fic, and now I'm about to do way more horrible things to him over here. Poor guy can't catch a break.


End file.
